cix The term plantador de cana de partido in Porto Feliz is similar to lavrador de cana used in Bahia. According to Ray Flory, "The society that developed along the Brazilian coast during the colonial period owed much of its character and organization to sugar. Where cane could be grown and transported, the Portuguese acquired land and settled permanently with their families. They planted cane on farms called fazendas de cana, and those among them with sufficient capital to do so constructed mills, or engenho, to manufacture sugar for export to Europe. The separation of cultivation and processing, as well as diverse labor needs at each stage of production, brought to the sugar zone a wide range of social elements whose functions, wealth, origins, and status varied. The structure and social categories of the plantation took form early and remained fixed on the Rec?vo for centuries … Typically the mill owners (senhores de engenho) directly cultivated only a portions of the cane they processed so there developed a much larger and internally diverse group of cane growers (lavradores de cana) who supplied the mills. Millers and growers alike imported the bulk of their labor force form Africa, and the senhores de engenho in particular brought to their states numerous free employees to provide skilled, technical, and supervisory services" [original emphasis]. Thus, in terms of space in the productive process, the term lavrador de cana applies to a cane grower who did not transform the cane into sugar. In Porto Feliz in the nineteenth century, the term plantador de cana de partido has the same sense, though theses growers would have possessed less slaves than their equivalents in Bahia. They planted cane on their own land or land belonging to other people. Furthermore, though this was rare they could also be sugar producers but without the status of senhor de engenho. FLORY, Rae Jean Dell. Bahian Society in the Middle-Colonial period: the sugar planters, tobacco growers, merchants and artisans of Salvador and the Rec?vo. 1680-1725. Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1978, pp. 17-18.
